Dan Duquette stood on the Fenway Park grass yesterday and answered a few questions. He's lucky. If he had been in a courtroom rather than a baseball park, a good lawyer would have easily pointed out that Mr. Duquette has a habit of contradicting himself. A lot.
These are indeed the last days for the Duke and his Red Sox. And when employees of any organization are near the end of their stints, they become desperate and illogical as they attempt to save their current jobs or line up their next ones. You can put Duquette in that category now. He is a very smart man who just doesn't make sense anymore.
Unfortunately, we're going to see a lot of this in the next month, and not just from Duquette. There will be coaches and players jumping ship, all trying to distance themselves from a season that is quickly becoming disastrous. Pitching coach John Cumberland was pushed off, learning after last night's game his services with the big club were no longer needed. It will be miniseries material and you might even enjoy it at first; we all secretly enjoy a little chaos, don't we? But in the end, watching players and management types run from responsibility will make you bitter and sad.
Yesterday, the man who created this bloated monster didn't want to take credit for it. When things are going well, GMs sound like parents talking about Junior on the honor roll. But here was Duke when someone asked him what went wrong: ''I'm not here to assess blame. I'm here to look for solutions. If you want to assess blame, you can assess blame.''
Huh?
Duquette is the GM. Assessing blame is precisely what GMs do so they can find solutions. You know the world is upside down when you hear Duquette speak negatively of an assessment. We all know he isn't exactly an emotional, touchy-feely kind of guy, and cold assessments are what he does best. Unless, of course, he knows that he is part of the problem. If there is a mirror in his office, I'd be surprised.
As Duquette took a pause from speaking, someone asked him if he has seen a spark from the team since Joe Kerrigan took over. He fired Jimy Williams, he said at the time, because the team wasn't showing any spark under him. After last night's loss to the Yankees, the Sox had lost eight games in a row and fallen nine games out of first place.
''Have you?'' the smirking GM said. ''Have you?''
Well, no, we haven't. But we didn't fire the manager. Eventually, Duquette pulled out one of his famous lines while endorsing Kerrigan. He said the former pitching coach - who happens to be his alter ego - is ''doing a good job, by and large.'' He said the same thing about Williams on one of his radio shows.
The GM also defended the new manager by saying most managers use spring training to implement what they want to do. True. So, why didn't he fire Williams after last season when it was clear he couldn't stand him? By waiting until August, Duquette got rid of the man he never wanted, but he did it at the expense of the playoffs. Criticize Williams if you want, but you can't deny this: He unintentionally brought players together because most of them hated him so much. Most of them wanted so badly to prove him wrong that they actually played well for him.
No one is playing well now. The division race is over, and the spin officially has begun. Pedro Martinez says it might not be a bad idea to shut him down for the year, and Duquette says it won't happen (''We're paying him a lot of money to pitch''). Carl Everett says he has torn cartilage in his knee, and Duquette says he doesn't know what the player is talking about. Duquette says that certain players on the team need to be better conditioned to avoid injuries, but says, ''I'm not going to name specific players'' when asked for names.
This is just the beginning. It's going to get worse. With each loss, someone new will cut emotional ties with this year's Sox. Duquette has built a team that features a few of today's stars, yesterday's heroes, and tomorrow's free agents. He doesn't have to claim them for us to know the truth. They are his. Baseball teams don't fall far from the executives who make them. These Sox are the Duke's echo. They are playing the same way he is talking: round and round, going nowhere.
By Michael Holley, Globe Staff, 9/3/2001
This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe on 9/3/2001
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.